


when I awoke, dear, I was mistaken

by actonbell



Series: Avengers, Assembled [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brooklyn Boys, Community: dailyprompt, Gen, New York City, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, Pre-War, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 21:26:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12566524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actonbell/pseuds/actonbell
Summary: "You're the only guy I know can piss people off by sitting down and painting a sign," Bucky said as an icebreaker. Steve shrugged irritably, the motion lost under the folds of his winter coat; it wasn't that cold, but when he lost the battle with his pride and put it on that meant he was feeling the chill.





	when I awoke, dear, I was mistaken

**Author's Note:**

> dailyprompt @ DW, [Prompt for 2017-10-30: "grocer's apostrophe".](https://dailyprompt.dreamwidth.org/750227.html)

Payday, and for once because he'd worked a couple extra hours and they'd both been careful for the past week and change, stretching out the ground round steak with bread and oatmeal and cornflakes, it wasn't all already eaten up in food and rent. Bucky turned left instead of right going home and went past the barbershop and the candy store, the latter due to be boarded up any day now, thinking he'd see if he could find a fruit stand and get five apples for a quarter, or maybe even some oranges. But if he got apples he could take them over to his mom's and get her to bake them with brown sugar and cinnamon and maybe even a little bit of butter, and then Steve could be coaxed to go there for dinner if they'd brought dessert, and they could take home the leftovers. But he was distracted by a small crowd starting to gather in front of Mulvaney's. Not anything big yet, it was more the neighbourhood toughs and their little-boy followers who hung out on the corners drifting closer to an argument with promise. Bucky saw a flash of bright hair which was quickly obscured behind someone's shoulder, and his heart sank.

He casually said "Hey, fellas, what's goin' on?" and shook hands with one guy, clapped a couple of shoulders, and pulled the brim of a brand-new cap down over the eyes of the smallest boy -- smaller even than Steve. The boy tried to cuff away his hand, indignantly pawing like a kitten, and Bucky grinned and resettled the cap at a stylish angle. The bigger boys, almost young men, had already started to drift away, since Bucky's presence inevitably neutralized any street conflict. Steve and Mulvaney were all puffed up at each other like two banty roosters -- Mulvaney was a small man too, but a head higher -- and Bucky guessed the upset was over the painted wood sign Steve held in front of him like a shield, a shred of brown wrapping paper still caught on one corner. It said, in nice curved letters: HAMBURGERS. People had complained about Mulvaney's sandwiches for so long (there was a story someone had showed him a ham and cheese with a green layer of mould between the fillings, and his reaction had been to scrape out the mould and put the sandwich back out for sale) it only made sense he'd try to cultivate a new market with heat and grease. His daughter had married a baker, so that did for the buns. Investing in a new sign rather than whitewash on the window meant he was confident in this new enterprise, as he should be: young men without wives to cook for them at home, if they were poor and hungry enough, could eat one or two and call it dinner. It was even cheaper than a hot special of hamburger steak with mashed potatoes and onions and bread and butter, cheap enough to justify another glass of beer to wash it down with.

" -- Just doesn't _look_ right," Mulvaney was saying with the sullen persistence of a man who has been repeatedly corrected and is determined not to let it sink in, "it doesn't _look_ right is all I'm saying. -- Hey, Buck!" he said with relief. "Just look here at what this crazy friend of yours painted on my sign, does that look right to you?"

Steve glared at Mulvaney. "He's just gonna tell you the same thing. I spelled it right, it's not my fault you can't rea -- "

"It looks good," Bucky said quickly, "a lot better than just painting on the glass, hunh? And this way it lasts. Looks fine to me. I like how the green matches the door." Mulvaney would have been on solid ground with "Hamburg Steak" or "Hamburg Sandwiches," but the lack of a grocer's apostrophe was throwing him. He wouldn't back down, and neither would Steve. Bucky smoothed it over enough to get Steve the rest of his commission, and Mulvaney propped the sign up in the saloon window, but he kept muttering about how _he_ thought it was spelled wrong and the little bastard wouldn't even fix it, not even when he got paid. So much for word of mouth. Bucky sighed. Apples forgotten, he managed to convince Steve to come back home with him so they could put their extra money in the rent bank (a tin nailed to the floor of the bedroom closet) and not worry themselves sick by the end of the month for once. Steve in this mood was dangerous, even if only to himself, likely to go picking fights as if scrapes and bruises could prove that his opinions did have weight in the world, that he couldn't just be brushed easily aside.

"You're the only guy I know can piss people off by sitting down and painting a sign," Bucky said as an icebreaker. Steve shrugged irritably, the motion lost under the folds of his winter coat; it wasn't that cold, but when he lost the battle with his pride and put it on that meant he was feeling the chill. "I wasn't wrong," he muttered, and of course that was the problem.

"I know. But -- see, now the trouble is he thinks you think he's a big uneducated lug."

"He _is_ a big uneducated lug," Steve said, but with less force, and Bucky put his arm around the thin shoulders he could feel the bones of through the thick layers of cloth; Steve's mother had bought it for him long ago, wanting good fabric because she thought he'd grow into it, but he never had. Bucky shook off the following thought _and never will_ suspiciously, not even wanting to hold in his mind the worry that Steve would never get any bigger, get any better, that this might be the last winter, that this winter the cold air and the goddamn drafts in the apartment and the 'flu or scarlet fever or pleurosis might snuff his spark out for good. It wasn't close to the end of fall yet, the sunlight was still mellow, stretching in long golden bars across the street, and when they got home he'd heat up some soup and maybe the last of the hash, warm them both up from the inside that way, and he squeezed Steve too tight to make him swear and to feel the heat from under his skin through his vest and shirt and coat, steady and reassuring.

Years later, the winter soldier would see a painted sign in the window of a village store and shiver, not knowing why he felt cold in the sun, not remembering what he wouldn't remember even later, not even when he had his own name and the warmth of Steve's body back again.

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be funny and wound up sad. *hands* A pre-War moment.


End file.
